Hello! I just have a quick post today to share a card made for the current challenge at the Paper Players and for the Mid-Month Throwdown at the OWH Stars & Stamps blog. It also fits into the current challenge at Addicted to Stamps and More. The stitched square dies fit together easily and perfectly to cut the frame for the focal panel. I discovered the clouds on my desk, leftovers from a previous project that had gotten hidden under an ink pad, so I added them to the scene.

Thanks for stopping by today! Your comments are always read and appreciated.

Edited on July 25, 2015: I’m thrilled and honored that this card was selected as “A Cut Above” at The Paper Players!

Edited on August 4, 2015: What a nice surprise – this card was chosen as an “Honourable Addict” at Addicted to Stamps and More! Thank you!

Hello! It’s Thursday, which means it’s time for a new challenge at CAS – Colours and Sketches! This week we have a pretty pastel color combination to work with.

As I was trying to decide what to make for my sample card for this challenge, I realized it’s my one-year anniversary on the CC&S design team. Yay! So I decided I’d repeat the same layout that I used for my first card as a CC&S design team member. Since I need a few more birthday cards for my next shipment to Operation Write Home, I went with a birthday theme. I didn’t want to use colored cardstock to die cut the balloons because I wanted the balloons to look more translucent like latex balloons. So I watercolored a few scraps of cardstock with the reinkers for the challenge colors. Once the scraps were dry, I cut the balloons from them.

Now it’s your turn to show us what you can make with these colors! If you need more inspiration first, go visit the CAS – Colours and Sketches site and see what the rest of the design team has created. Be sure to link your card at the CC&S site by 1:00 p.m. Eastern time on Wednesday, June 25. We look forward to having you join us!

Hello! Today marks the beginning of another sketch challenge at CAS – Colours and Sketches. This time Karen has us working with blocks – which really leaves a lot to the imagination as to how you want to use them!

I’ve decided to combine this challenge with the Dynamic Duos challenge that ends today. They’re asking us to use soft shades of aqua and pink. I’ve run some Pink Pirouette cardstock through an embossing folder for the bottom block of the sketch. For the vertical block, I’ve chosen a piece of designer paper that’s Pool Party and Very Vanilla, and colored in the centers of the flowers with a pink marker to tie all the colors together. I’ve used both colors to stamp the sentiment so that I could highlight the last word. The blocks of color also work for the current CAS-ual Fridays challenge, and the pastel colors tie into this week’s OWH Midweek Throwdown challenge.

Be sure to check out what the rest of the CAS – Colours and Sketches design team did with this sketch. Then show us what you can make with it! You can link your card to the challenge blog until 1:00 p.m. eastern time Wednesday, January 29. Thanks for stopping by today!

Here’s a quick card I put together, combining the sketch from CAS(E) this Sketch! with the colors from Dynamic Duos and the theme from the OWH Stars & Stamps Midweek Throwdown. This is almost a one-layer card. The sentiment is stamped directly on the card base, but the floral stamping is on a separate panel. The lighter shades of ink were created by stamping off onto a scrap piece of paper. I added a bit of sponging around the edge of the triangular panel to help set it off visually from the card base.

This card will be sent to Operation Write Home. Hopefully one of our military heroes stationed overseas will enjoy sending it home to someone he or she loves.

Thanks for stopping by today! As always, comments are welcome and appreciated!

Hello! The month of July seems to be flying by. It’s hard to believe it’s the 20th already!

Over at 52 {Christmas} Card Throwdown, the challenge hostess gets to choose either a theme challenge or a recipe challenge for the third Saturday of the month. I’m hosting this month, and I’ve decided to cook up a recipe challenge. Don’t worry, it’s easy as 1, 2, 3! That means using 1 ribbon, 2 patterned papers, and 3 gems on your card.

I’ve stayed with the 52{C}CT July sketch for the layout of my card, but turned it on its side. For the one ribbon requirement, I made a tiny fork bow with the toddler fork my son used when he was little, and used it to dress up the larger penguin. One of my designer papers is the falling snow design on the focal panel, and the other is the red snowflake pattern on the middle panel. I’ve added a tiny pearl to the center of each of the three stamped snowflakes. And there it is – 1, 2, 3! I used shimmer paint on the white cardstock to make it look like light glistening on the snow. It’s not one of my best coloring jobs on the penguins, but oh well.

I do have to acknowledge and thank my 14-year-old son for the input he gave on this card. He preferred the look of pearls to rhinestones. He also tickled my funny bone with his comments about the smaller penguin: “That is THE most thoughtful penguin ever. He has such a thoughtful look on his face. It’s like he’s looking at nothing, but he sees everything.”

OK – that about wraps things up for this post! Thanks for stopping by today! Be sure to check out the samples the rest of the 52{C}CT design team has made. Then go try the recipe yourself! You have until 1:00 p.m. eastern time Friday, July 26 to link your card to the challenge post on the 52{C}CT website.

Hello! This week at CAS – Colours and Sketches Louise has drafted a very simple little sketch for us to follow. It’s a good one for quick cards! I’ve combined the sketch with the OWH Midweek Throwdown challenges from this week (make a masculine card) and last week (use the color scheme of red, white, blue and kraft). Actually, I guess this card really could be gender neutral. But I’m calling it masculine for the sake of the challenge. 😉 I’ve stretched the sketch from a square to a portrait-oriented rectangle.

I haven’t decided yet if I’ll use this card as an AnyHero card to lift the spirits of one of our military men or women stationed overseas, or to let one of them use it to send a note of thanks to someone. Maybe I’ll just have to make a twin for it so I can have one card for each purpose.

I hope you’ll show us what you can do with this sketch! Link your card at the CAS – Colours and Sketches site by noon eastern time Wednesday, July 17. Thanks for stopping by today!

It’s time for another challenge with 52 {Christmas} Card Throwdown! This week’s challenge is using baker’s twine as an embellishment. Even though I like the look of baker’s twine, and I have quite a few colors of it, I don’t use tend to use it very often. I can’t really explain why but I’m guessing my lack of confidence about tying bows is part of it. So this challenge was a good one to nudge me out of that shell I’ve put myself in.

I still kept my twine usage pretty simple, by using it as ribbon on the little presents. I tied the bows separately, using my Bow Easy, and attached them to the presents with a bit of glue. (I’ll make sure they are nice and secure before I send the card to Operation Write Home!) The presents were a fun way to use up some scraps of designer paper. The vertical red piece was also a scrap; I’ve stamped it with a background stamp in a similar shade of red to give it a little more visual interest. The presents are attached with dimensional adhesive. The layout for this card is based on this week’s Freshly Made Sketches challenge, but I’ve stretched it into a portrait orientation instead of a landscape orientation and added an extra element to help fill up the space. This makes the card fit into the OWH Midweek Throwdown “Times Three” challenge. It ties into this week’s challenge at Winter Wonderland so I’ll enter it there, too. (Pun intended? You decide for yourself. ;))

I hope you’ll join us at 52 {Christmas} Card Throwdown this week! Go see what the other design team members have made, and leave them a little love on their blogs. Then create a Christmas card of your own using baker’s twine, and share it at the 52{C}CT site via the linky tool. We’d love to see what you can do!

I have to admit it felt good to use some of my Tangerine Tango cardstock! I have such a hard time using that color. Many thanks to the CAS – Colours and Sketches girls for making me push out of my comfort zone with it!

Here’s a card I put together pretty quickly this morning, just in time to enter into the Inkspirational color challenge of pink, banana and slate. I used Stampin’ Up’s retired color Going Gray for my slate color. The layout for this card is this week’s OWH Stars & Stamps sketch, substituting the bunny for the circle. I fussy cut the bunny after I colored him, and he’s attached to the card with dimensional adhesive. I also incorporated the OWH Midweek Throwdown challenge of using tags and twine.

I’ve combined several challenges for today’s card. Inkspirational Challenges has an “Anything Goes” theme right now. CAS – Colours and Sketches has provided a sketch and a monochromatic color scheme. The OWH Midweek Throwdown presented last Wednesday called for birthday cards. So I’ve put all of that together into one card. I was trying to tie in the black and indigo inks together for a shadowy effect on the “Happy Birthday” sentiment; I’m not quite sure I succeeded but I guess it doesn’t look too bad. I opted to stamp that sentiment directly onto the left bottom corner of the main image panel rather than make a smaller panel as shown in the sketch; I felt this gave a more clean and simple look to the card.

This week’s Dynamic Duos color challenge called for the colors Soft Suede and Crumb Cake, and the OWH Stars & Stamps Midweek Throwdown challenge is to create birthday cards. So I decided to make a birthday card using those colors. I kept the card really clean and simple. This color scheme seemed masculine to me so I tried to give the card a masculine feel with some tree images, a sentiment in a rather plain font, and a very simple ribbon embellishment.

Happy Friday! It’s time for another Sweet ‘n Sassy Digi Challenge! This week’s challenge is an easy one: Anything Goes! Simply make something featuring a digital image. It can be a card, a gift bag, a tag, a scrapbooking layout, or an altered project. The sky’s the limit! Share your artwork over at the Sweet ‘n Sassy Digi Challenge website before midnight eastern time Thursday, January 24. We’d love to see what you create! Although we especially enjoy seeing what our challenge participants make with Sweet ‘n Sassy digital images, you can use a digi from any stamp company.

Today is especially exciting because Sweet ‘n Sassy Stamps is introducing 7 new digital images! That’s right, 7! Let me tell you, they are ADORABLE. Each is a different animal with a sentiment to match. The rest of the design team and I are showcasing different ones this week, so please check out everyone’s blogs so you can see all the new cuties! Links are over in the left sidebar. And yes – there are two new links over there because we have two new design team members! Welcome, Lori Finch and Amy Wright!

I have two projects for you today. The first one uses the Turtley Awesome image and its accompanying sentiment. I chose this image because I wanted to add a card that could be sent to a boy to my Operation Write Home stash. The layout for this card started off as this week’s Splitcoaststampers.com sketch challenge, but I decided to leave off one of the sketch elements. I’ve paper pieced the turtle using two shades of green designer paper, and I used dimensional adhesive to pop its head out of its shell. Although there isn’t a dominating amount of green on this card, I think it still fits into this week’s OWH Midweek Throwdown challenge.

My other project is another card for Operation Write Home. I chose to use the image from Thank Ewe in a different way. I added a little bit of coloring to the lamb to give it some visual dimension (although it would also be cute with the head popped up like I did with the turtle), paired it with this week’s Stars & Stamps sketch, and added a sentiment from one of the Sweet ‘n Sassy clear stamp sets. And ta-da: an Easter lamb! I did mirror-image the sketch so the lamb wouldn’t appear to be looking off the edge of the card. The oval element of the sketch reminds me of an Easter egg!

So now it’s time for you to check out what the rest of the design team has done with the other new images, and then create your own project to share with us! Thanks for stopping by today. Have a fabulous weekend!

Hi, and Happy New Year! We’ve made it through another week, and now it’s Friday again, which means it’s time for another Sweet ‘n Sassy Digi Challenge! This week’s challenge should be pretty fun: Use a new product or technique and a digital image to make your project. Share your work over at the Sweet ‘n Sassy Digi Challenge website before midnight eastern time Thursday, January 10. We’d love to see what you create!

The new product I chose to work with isn’t entirely brand new to the crafting world. I had bought a set of Faber Castell Gelatos at a scrapbooking/stamping store in Florida when my family was visiting my in-laws over Thanksgiving, but with the busy-ness of preparing for Christmas, I didn’t have a chance to do anything with them until now. So I browsed YouTube for video tutorials using this coloring medium and learned several different techniques to use with them. I’ve tried mine out in two different ways, so I have two cards for you today. Both cards use the same floral images.

For the flowers on the first card, I rubbed two colors of the Gelatos on the flowers, not trying to be totally precise on getting the color to cover the flower. Then I used my fingertip to blend the colors together to completely cover the image, before cutting the flower images from the cardstock. A couple things I noted: 1) The colors blended more easily the heavier I applied them to the paper, and the warmer my fingers were, and 2) The colors wash off fingers VERY easily, with no staining! The Gelatos I have are metallic, but the shimmer seemed to disappear into the cardstock after several hours. On the card below, you can still see a bit of shimmer on the flower on the right. I wanted the sentiment on this card to take up a fair amount of vertical space, but I also wanted one that would be practical for Operation Write Home. So I took one of the choices from the Mother’s Day Sentiments digital set, used my photo editing software to break each word into its own file, and then reassembled the words into three lines instead of the original one long, narrow line. I used one of my newest Nestabilities dies to cut the sentiment panel, and then framed it with cardstock that coordinated with the colors I used for the flowers.

The packaging stated that the Gelatos can be blended either with or without water, so I tried watercoloring some of the flower images with them. I applied the Gelatos to the cardstock, and then blended them with a slightly wet paintbrush. Wow! The colors blended SO easily! It was almost like magic. I let the images dry completely before cutting them out. I noticed that the watercolored images turned out a tiny bit lighter in color than the ones I blended with my fingertip, but they retained a whole lot more shimmer than the finger-blended ones. However, if you rub the watercolored images with your finger, a little of the shimmer comes off on your finger. This doesn’t happen with the finger-blended ones. So I’m a bit hesitant about using the watercolored ones on cards for Operation Write Home. (NOTE – Not all Gelatos are metallic like mine are. This is 100% totally a guess, but I’d think that images watercolored with non-metallic Gelatos would be all right for OWH.) I decided to make a birthday card with the watercolored flowers, and I’ll send it to one of my friends. I used the current Freshly Made Sketches layout for this card, stretching it out to a rectangle. You can tell from the photo that these flowers have more shimmer than the ones on the first card. I used a sentiment from a clear Sweet ‘n Sassy stamp set on this card, rather than trying to put the entire card base through the printer. On both this card and the first one, the purple cardstock coordinates better with the rest of the card in real life than the picture shows.

So, there you have it – two different ways to use Faber Castell Gelatos. Thanks for stopping by today! Now it’s your turn to show off what you can create with something that is new to you, using a digital image for your main focal point! I’m looking forward to seeing what you link to the Sweet ‘n Sassy Digi Challenge site!

Hello! I hope all of my blog visitors have had a wonderful, joyous holiday season, no matter whether you celebrate Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, or something else.

I took a little hiatus from crafting over the holidays, and now I’m trying to get back into the swing of things. I used the mirror image of the latest Freshly Made Sketch for the layout, although I didn’t get the card finished in time for me to enter it into the challenge. Oh well. I decided to go with a brown color scheme for the bunny image. The current OWH Midweek Throwdown challenge is calling for “miss you” cards, so that helped determine the sentiment I chose.

Here’s wishing you all the best in 2013! Thanks for visiting with me throughout the year.

I am fortunate to have received free and/or discounted products in the past from Sweet 'n Sassy Stamps for promotional purposes.
Although I frequently mention various other companies and websites, I have received no compensation from them in any form for using their products, unless specifically noted.